SSTI Digest

In an era marked by constrained regional innovation funding and a national AI training need growing exponentially, it seems odd to be writing that a new $25 million federal funding competition may receive fewer than the necessary qualified applications to spend all of the available money for awards. The program at risk is the AI Upscale Accelerator Program, launched by the Economic Development Administration, which has a rapidly approaching deadline of July 10.  

Gina Raimondo, the 40th U.S. Secretary of Commerce and 75th Governor of Rhode Island, and Eric Holcomb, the 51st Governor of Indiana, today launched RAISE US, a nonpartisan national organization that will partner with governors, employers, workers, and training organizations to help the American workforce make a successful transition to an AI economy. RAISE US will design and pilot new corporate incentives to retrain and redeploy workers, new approaches to support people through job transitions, and new training models tied to changing employer demand.  

There’s a lot of churn in state budgets this year, but the bottom line is clear: tighter budgets are ahead for most states. As a result, governors and legislatures—with a few exceptions—are approaching Fiscal Year 2027 (FY 27) with cautious or constrained funding priorities. The warning signs are clear.

Research finds young innovation-centered firms operating at a loss realize one-third less value from the federal R&D tax credit than the national average. Federal support for business R&D in the United States relies heavily on tax incentives. The federal R&D tax credit and deduction together provide far more support for private-sector research than direct federal funding programs, making them one of the government’s primary tools for encouraging innovation.

On June 4, Congresswoman Lori Trahan (D-MA-03) and Congressman Jay Obernolte (R-CA-23), members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, released a discussion draft of the Great American AI Act, bipartisan legislation to create a federal framework for how the U.S. will govern artificial intelligence. According to a press release from the Office of Congresswoman Trahan, the act is the product of ongoing bipartisan conversations and builds on the bipartisan House AI Task Force. 

The new Income Distribution Analysis Tool (IDAT), released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), allows users to easily build custom tables, maps, and charts within BEA’s platform. Fueled by data from the distribution of personal income statistics , data is available at the national and state levels and covers various income series, distribution metrics, and more. The number of years available varies by selection, with some having 25 years of data available. The tool may be useful for economic developers and academic researchers to evaluate the effectiveness of significant policy decisions by helping assess changes over time in the standard of living for various areas of the country.

According to NSF and the SEMI Foundation, “By 2030, the United States is projected to face a shortfall of approximately 127,000 to 157,000 semiconductor and microelectronics workers.” In an effort to counteract the potential challenge to U.S. competitiveness, the foundation is serving as the Hub Operator for the National Network for Microelectronics Education (NNME) and recently announced the launch of the first four Regional Nodes of the NNME. Three of the four nodes are led by SSTI members: Boise State University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the Arizona Commerce Authority. The fourth node is led by NY Creates. 

Every week. SSTI members receive the Funding Supplement, an exclusive members-only electronic publication with information on applications, eligibility criteria, and submission deadlines for funding opportunities offered by federal government agencies, foundations, and other organizations. Expanding this benefit, SSTI has released a Funding Supplement Search for members, including over 200 active and 5,700 total opportunities to reference. Every week, new opportunities are added and updated. 

Within the search, funding opportunities can be filtered by active or all opportunities, by award type (e.g., fellowship, federal, foundation), and keywords. 

This week's joint meeting of the Lab-to-Market and Entrepreneurship Development subcommunities of SSTI's TBED Community of Practice focused on how the NSF I-Corps and DOE Energy I-Corps programs help researchers move discoveries beyond the lab and toward real-world use. A central theme was the importance of engaging potential customers early, testing market assumptions, and confirming the existence of a real need before investing significant resources in technology development. 

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has proposed sweeping revisions to the rules for procurement and grant making (2 CFR Part 200) in the Federal Register. These changes would solidify an August 2025 executive order that gives political appointees final authority over awarding federal grants.

A new working paper from researchers affiliated with the U.S. Census Bureau and several universities revisits one of the biggest questions in innovation policy: why has productivity growth slowed even as research and development spending continues to rise? For the technology-based economic development (TBED) community, the answer matters because it shapes how states, regions, and federal agencies think about innovation investments.